Anyway, with No. 4 going to the Jets, this will change Madden NFL 09 a bit. As I mentioned before, he’s going to be in a roster update Aug. 12. I’m sure Chad Pennington will be cut< in a new place as well.

As for the packaging, it’s pretty much staying the same. Electronic Arts doesn’t plan on making changes to the Madden coverboy photo. But enthusiasts obsessive Jets fans can download a Brett in Jet uniform at easports.com in the coming days. They can then print it, cut it out and slap it on their shiny new copy of Madden.

EA also simmed a season with New York Jet Brett Favre and he took them to the playoffs with an odd 11-4-1 record. Not bad.

OK, Brett Favre just got traded to the Jets. Apparently, no one has time to photo old No. 4 in a Jets jersey. Unable to get someone to work on photoshop, the resourceful folks at ESPN did the next best thing. They fired up a copy of Madden NFL and traded Favre to the Jets. Eh, he looks all right in a different sort of green.

Aaron Rodgers fans rejoice! The former Cal quarterback is going to be the starting signal caller for the Green Bay Packers. Well, he is going to be a starter in Madden that is.

One of the things that the whole Brett Favre fiasco is doing is messing with Madden NFL 09 rosters.

Remember the Pasta Padre leak of the Madden NFL 09 player ratings? Well, on the Packers side, it was assumed that Favre was retired so this is how it looked like.

Well now that Old No. 4 is back on the roster, that may shake up things up a bit. According to EA’s Tyrone Miller, Brett Favre will be on the roster update when the game is released Aug. 12. When folks play the game, he’ll be listed as the back-up QB, and depending on what happens in camp, he may be listed as the starter when EA Tiburon does its next update before the season.

If players just want to simulate the inevitable. They can just move Favre to the starting lineup themselves or maybe he’ll get traded … . I, for one, blame the Madden curse for this whole problem circus. It is all-powerful. I’m sure this is the first and only time Madden has had a back-up quarterback on its cover.

I don’t know why in the world Brett Favre wants to come back to the NFL. Doesn’t he know he’s on the Madden NFL 09 cover? Doesn’t he know that folks on said cover have awful seasons often risking injury? Or perhaps, this is working the other way around.

The Madden curse is so powerful that it can make rational people make irrational decisions. Even Hall of Famers can’t resist it’s nefarious powers. (Cue the spooky music.)

Anyway, EA decided to have a little fun with this hoopla over Favre. Where will he go? What will he do? To help give fans an idea of Favre’s impact, the folks at Tiburon simmed the NFL season with Favre on different teams.

This is it. Last and most certainly least, we’ve come to team defense.

Defense wins championships in real football but not in fantasy. If your league runs team defense your best bet is to just pick up the available D with the weakest matchup every week. Seriously, “Whoever’s playing the Dolphins.” is way better than even the most solid drafted defense. Try it this year. If the Dolphins’ opponents are taken pick whoever’s up against the Falcons and so on.

But I promised you rankings and rankings you shall get. If you insist on sticking with one unit this is probably, more or less, your best bet.

Kickers get no respect. For instance, there has yet to be a Madden 09 screenshot released of a kicker. The closest I could get is what you see above, Devin Hester fielding a short field goal after the kicker blew it.

This is also true in fantasy, but there’s a good reason behind it: There’s no such thing as a bad fantasy kicker. A kicker on a good team will get you decent point totals off extra points. A kicker on a bad team will get you decent point totals off field goals when the offense stalls in the end zone. The difference between the #1 kicker and the #10 kicker in my rankings is 4.05. It’s hard to go wrong.

So why bother with kicker rankings at all? Because that 4.05 difference could mean the difference between the playoffs and an early end to the season if you’re on the bubble. Every point counts.

Tight end is a volatile position. It’s hard to rank not only because of all the duties the TE has to perform, but because it’s better for a tight end if the quarterback is worse, but not if the QB is so bad he can’t find him to get him the ball. TE scouting is an attempt to find a balance; a good offense but not too good, a solid but not spectacular QB, a good enough line that they don’t need a sixth blocker but not so good the QB can skip the short pass for a deep shot.

When putting together fantasy cheat sheets I always had the most trouble with the wide receivers.

With quarterbacks it’s very straightforward, one team one starter. Running backs often have committees but in the end the starter is the starter, look at him and at the line and you’ve got a pretty good idea.

But receivers? To start off there are usually two on the field for every play. A #1 wide receiver gets the same number of snaps as a #2. No receiver can do anything without a good quarterback. If there isn’t a solid #2 across the field they’re subjected to double teams. Then there’s the third receiver to worry about who vultures catches away from the other two.

Working out a formula to turn Madden ratings into fantasy rankings took some more factors. Specifically, the quality of the second RB on the depth chart.

Anyone who plays fantasy football knows that two-back systems are bad news but I for one didn’t realize exactly how much it affects rankings. For example, before I factored in RB depth, the top five were LT, Brian Westbrook, Marion Barber, Fred Taylor and Steven Jackson. Add Maurice Jones-Drew to the equation, Taylor drops to 7.

I will admit it is still a little screwy, but it does give a boost to guys like Fred Taylor and Jamal Lewis who vastly outperformed their draft positions last year.

People who don’t have to spend any time within earshot of me may not realize it but I’m obsessed with football. Clinically obsessed. From the start of training camp to the end of the Pro Bowl it’s impossible to hold a conversation with me for more than 15 seconds before I bring up football. And, as our loyal readers know, I’m also obsessed with video games. That’s how I survive the offseason.

This is a rare combination of obsessions. In fact there are only two places where these two obsessions cross: Madden and fantasy football. And I’ve finally found a way to combine them.

IGN recently posted 32 tables of numbers, the complete stats for every player in the NFL according to Madden NFL 09. Many of them are absurdly out of line with reality, especially the speed ratings, but the overall ratings tend to track pretty well with reality. So I thought to myself while working on my fantasy cheat sheets, is there a way to use this? Can I use EA’s painstaking research to rank players for fantasy football purposes?

As it turns out I can. And every morning this week I’ll share another position ranking with you. We’ll start with quarterbacks.